DWP assessments cost more than the benefits

For disabled people, there is no bigger evil than the work capability assessments that the DWP inflicts on them. In March 2011, the Department for Work and Pensions started to remove disability benefits from people that independent assessors deemed fit for work. It sounds sensible in theory, but in practice it was executed in a most evil manner, with independent contractor Atos subjecting disabled people to the most humiliating experiences, and having people with no medical experience decide on whose benefits to remove.

The National Audit Office have now released figures that show that this degrading debacle in fact cost the country far more than it saved;

Unbelievably, the cost of paying private contractors to do the assessments is £1.6bn over 3 years, with savings failing to reach even £1bn by 2020. So the government is on balance paying private contractors millions of pounds simply to inflict misery on disabled people. Mwhaha.

And the misery should not be underestimated. Over 60% of people assessed say that their examinations by the unqualified examiners exacerbates their illnesses, and several university studies have shown that the assessments have led to a statistically significant increase in suicides. And not only are we paying private contractors a fortune, they are not reaching the correct assessments, with the DWP overturning hundreds of thousands of cases of Atos claiming people were fit for work. When you measure evil done for pounds spent, this has to be a winner.